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Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Accompanied by Penticton Indian Band Chief
Jonathan Kruger and Sarah Dickie, Randy Fred receives a hand-made
blanket for his contribution to Aboriginal literature/Q&Q

Congratulations to Theytus and thanks to all

who have assisted in the flourishing!

Theytus was founded by Randy Fred in Nanaimo, B.C., in 1980, the same
year Winnipeg’s Pemmican Publications debuted. Fred sold the company a
few years later to the Okanagan Indian Education Resources Society and
the Nicola Valley Indian Administration in Penticton.
“In the early 1980s, aboriginal communications was just coming into
its own,” Fred recalls. “I always had this desire to … educate general
society about aboriginal matters. The buzzword in those days was
‘cross-cultural understanding.’”

Fred adds that the most significant barriers he encountered at the
time were the intolerant and exclusive attitudes of government agencies
toward an aboriginal man.

“At times, I was being looked at as an inferior person,” he says.
“One of the purposes of Theytus in the beginning was to break down those
racial barriers. Canada’s not blatantly racist, but the subtleties in
racism make life quite difficult at times.… Having attended an Indian
residential school for nine years and made to feel ashamed for being
Indian, I was trying to battle out of that cultural sphere.”

Randy Fred more recently launched a print and online arts magazine, FACE-Siem: first issue is online, with a second edition expected in June 2012.

~

Kogawa House Sunday Salon with Shirley Bear

December 4th — Shirley Bear

2pm – 4pm

Shirley Bear returns to Vancouver to read from her 2006 collection Virgin Bones – Belayak Kcikug’nas’ikn’ug at Kogawa House. A visual artist, writer, and activist, she was honored last week at Rideau Hall with the Order of Canada.